To think customer service is SHIT in the UK

[PMTsickandtiredofyourshit]

•All phone lines are automated and take up to an hour to get through. They usually have some nonsense excuse answerphone message about Covid 19 causing ‘higher than normal call volumes’ that hasn’t been changed in years.

•restaurants are increasingly taking ages to serve and give the impression you’re on a time limit at your table. Wait staff less charming/ less people skills/ less cherishing of customers.

•Today I went to mountain warehouse to get DD some snow boots. Every question I asked the staff they couldn’t answer. I asked if they’d had shoe fitting training because I couldn’t tell which size DD should have. The staff just shrugged and said they had no training. Finally found a good pair but it had a sharp bit sticking out of the inside. I asked if they had the same pair without the fault and was told no but they’d give me a discount! Obviously I wasn’t going to buy my DD a pair of boots with a metal shard sticking out of the interior!

•Then I went to Aldi where they had loads of new self-checkouts which I was heartily encouraged to use by one of the staff, despite the fact I had a full trolly of food. It was a fucking nightmare and took a good 30 minutes. Every other item didn’t scan, there was no where to fit my DD, my trolly and myself without being in the way of the people trying to get out, there were boxes and crap dumped on the floor in front of the trolly. It was incredibly stressful and made me resolve to stop using ALdi and just bankrupt myself by using a nicer, less stressful supermarket.

•Finally I went to Neros where the queue was its usual mile long glacial paced scenario with three women behind the counter, one who was having a huge scratch of her scalp then serving pastries. She got in a huge muddle when selling me two gift cards and was completely baffled by the fact that the two gift cards were to be given to two separate people so I would need two separate gift receipts. I have no idea if these £30 worth of gift cards have actually been credited.

Even trying to book an appointment with my Dr, I have to be given the Spanish Inquisition by one of the receptionists who seems to be qualified to triage the doctor’s diary in the most brusk, patronising non-compassionate way ever. I’m sorry if I don’t want to tell you the ins and outs of my vaginal thrush problem whilst stood outside my office in earshot of my colleagues having been on hold since I was getting dressed at home Janet! FFS. 🤦‍♀️

I just don’t know what has become of customer service these days. It’s as though people who work with the public actively hate them.

How can this be changed!?

Poor pay, poor to no training, management nowhere to be seen, staff shortages.

I always tried my best but a lot of the times, circumstances are just outside of our control.

And shouting at us retail workers doesn't help - if anything, it slowed me down and made me more prone to mistakes.

Having had terrible customer service from John Lewis online recently, I am inclined to agree. Two people by email and two on the phone. All I wanted was a return label. I could write the detail here but I will get too wound up re-living it. It was partly a language barrier thing I think as well 😳

Aren’t these people customers too? Don’t they want good service when they are customers?

I am polite and patient but you don’t even get an apology these days.

I get many customers ate rude. But what about those of us who are smiley, polite and grateful. Why be rude to us from the get-go? I would not get away with that in my job and anyway I would not want to be like that.

Agree. I'm sick of having to do everything myself in a shop.
I applaud booths who are bringing tills back Same I'm down south and they are mostly north.

Think on the rest of the supermarkets!!!

Also call centres complete shit

I work in customer service, I try my best and I'm good at my job but quite frankly I'm not given enough information to do my job properly, I'm on minimum wage and people can be quite vile to us, we have lost three staff members in the last 3 weeks, I'm only in this job because it fits around my kids, as soon as I can leave I will

yanbu about the phone lines and the stupid 'high call volumes' with the recorded messages about finding information on their websites. Although, lots of companies don't even have phone numbers anymore and you have to send an email or use a chatbot, which generates useless answers. Some places in person are still good though, usually independent food places.

A bit of both for me really.

Needed Thames Water to come and unblock a drain recently and they came out immediately. Great service, really professional and friendly.

I used the Aldi self checkout for a full trolley shop the other day and found it absolutely fine. Took nowhere near 30 minutes, no issues, great staff.

HMRC was a fairly lengthy call the other day but were great when the call was answered.

Had a few incidents of slower service but nothing awful.

While I agree to some extent, I'm also on the other side of this and I am increasingly being met with sarcasm, belittling, a condescending and patronising attitude, aggression and once during the pandemic, physical assault (the most recent episode, it's happened before then too) before I've even had chance to say or do anything. So not even as a result of making a mistake or bad service because I haven't had chance to do or say anything yet! (not that being human and making a mistake or misunderstanding something is a reasonable excuse to behave like that anyway).

We, as a society look down on these jobs, there's plenty who think you are lazy, thick, uninspired etc when you do a job like this, that you and what you do is unimportant, it's not valued, the roles are not paid well, they're not respected, that they're for students and bored housewives, they're not 'proper' jobs, therefore they can be treated badly with no concequence - unfortunately this down turn in service is one of the concequences.

But obviously customer service is important and valuable, as shown by many threads like this on here alone.

So perhaps if we actually valued these roles and the jobs they do then things would improve.

And I also think that since the pandemic customer behaviour has deteriorated, and more staff are refusing to be abused, and boy, some people really don't like having their whipping boy taken away and having to deal with their own feelings and emotions rather than offload them onto someone else who can't fight back.

I think customers are equally getting more impatient - Aldi is always busy with trollies/boxes out - and larger tills open, coffee takes a while to prepare, and you don't need a Dr for thrush - boots sell cream!

but minimum wage has increased hugely over the last few years, both just on its own and as a percentage of the median wage.
over minimum wage has gone from £7.83 in 2018 to £10.42 by next April, as a comparison over the same time period in 2004-2009 it went up by less than 95p.
Your average call centre worker or retail staff member or barista (if over 23) working 40hrs a week would make £21,673 annually, even if on minimum wage (lots are paying more - your Aldi cashier earning £11.40 p/h would earn £23,712 annually on those hours, for example).

As a comparison an emergency care assistant working on an ambulance, literally saving lives every night starts on £22,816, a nurse after at least a 3 year degree starts on £28,407.

Of course that's because other roles are significantly underpaid rather than minimum wage being too high, but it undermines the 'badly paid' or 'since covid' arguments because minimum wage jobs have never been so (comparatively) well paid.

I think it's a mix of people being increasingly rude (which probably has got worse since covid), increase of hourly contracts (if the company won't commit to you why would you do anything other than the bare minimum for them), and an increase in expectation.

Back when only the top 10-20% went to university a customer service job for your average/lower achiever would have been seen as a perfectly good thing, a career you could take pride in, enjoy, stay at the same place for a long time or even your whole life, make close friends, get to know your local community and maybe even progress up the ladder. Now when the target is for 50% of kids to go to university anything else is seen as a waste of time, thus the stories of people telling their kids 'this is why you work hard at school, you don't want to end up working here.'

You see it on here - when I was in 6th form nearly everyone had a part time job. Now it's all 'Oh no it's not fair for Esme to do anything than will take time away from revision for A levels.' And thus with fewer people having experience of minimum wage jobs, they less likely to have respect for the hard work it involves, and more likely to talk to those people rudely/dismissively, and thus the cycle continues.

Plus 20 years ago yes kids dreamed about being pop stars or footballers but were aware the chances were vanishingly small. Now the possibility of a more exciting life as an influencer or tiktok star seems much more achievable the prospect of a boring every day job is less enticing.

I served tea and coffee once at a local kids football event, and oh my god, just a small selection of the comments from adults.

Them ‘Can’t you make my drink faster?’
Me ‘If you can make a kettle boil faster, be my guest.’ To be fair, they then had the grace to look embarrassed.

Them ‘Eww, is the coffee instant? I want a latte!’
Me ‘We are in the middle of a fucking field, no you cannot have a latte.’

Them ‘50p for a mug of tea / coffee is too expensive’
Me 🤷‍♀️ ‘Fuck off you tight arsed twat’

If you work in customer service I feel sorry for you for the sheer twattery you have to put up with. 😂

I work in retail and I’m lucky that most customers are lovely. Occasionally I do get abuse, recently a lady calling me lazy and ‘not actually sorry’ because she had to queue to pay for her items. I think she wanted me to take over a manned till and queue jump for her?

It says a lot when part of retail training involves how to deal with abusive customers.

I agree, I don't blame CS staff for expecting dickhead customers, but some of them hate their job and really show it. We're all stressed, we all would rather be at home in bed but I'm sure their days would go by quicker if they tried to cheer up, or make their jobs easier. Even small business owners are rude to customers now, I feel like I'm constantly treated like I'm going to haggle over prices or steal their products.

That ^^
We do have queues, on a Monday morning, and people complain about it
If you ring on a Monday morning then yes there will be a queue!
I'm always polite but being screamed at gets wearing after a while, and if I'm saying no, screaming at me won't change that. People don't understand if I say no I can't fit you in, that means no and you'll have to go somewhere else

How wonderful!

You’re not wrong about service, but who is ‘Janet’? Are you using it in stereotypical way? That’s not nice if you are.

I find customer service to be much better at small businesses near me, they seem genuinely friendly. YANBU in general though

@easylikeasundaymorn

Quite a lot of people doing these jobs are under 23.

For 16-17year olds minimum wage is £5.28 (2023) - working day = £38
for 18-20 year old it's £7.49 (2023) - working day - £55

Some places pay better, but in some areas this is what is paid.

The general public have become very vile. No please or thank you, cannot wait etc. If you work in customer services and see what people have to put up with day in day out, I salute you.

I don’t think low wages is a good enough reason for youngsters to be rude to customers or sloppy at their jobs.
I always tried my hardest when I was on low wage jobs as a youngster and it was a case of you get back what you put in.

I wasn’t rude at any point and as an ex waitress, barista, retail assistant and checkout assistant, I never would be.
It just disappoints and depresses me how little customers are valued.

Probably just a sad symptom of late stage capitalism.

Whoever invented "virtual assistants" should have been sacked. I'm fed up wanting to speak to a human, having to go through FAQs only to find my question isn't there then be directed to the chatbot who unsurprisingly can't help me and I have to talk to an actual person.

Yes that's what I wanted to do in the first place - why wasn't "Talk to a human being" one of the options?

Self service checkouts give me the rage. Yes, there's an unexpected item in the bagging area - it's a fucking bag! The girl at Tesco was urging me to take my full trolley to self service and when I declined said she'd help me like I was some sort of idiot, I said no thank you and was quite happy to join the queue to be served by a person,

I experienced poor customer service in Orlando this year, so it's not just the UK. We went on holiday there in the past, and people always seemed extra nice with excellent customer service. That's no longer always the case we found. People looking miserable and shrugging their shoulders when you asked them a question.

We did have amazing customer service in a little independent pub the other day. We were there for my dm's birthday meal, and it was wonderful. Great food, quick service. They kept coming over to ask if we needed anything, if we wanted more drinks, if everything was ok with the food. Couldn't do enough for us. It was busy as well.

" It’s as though people who work with the public actively hate them."

Well, if you work with the public long enough, it becomes quite difficult to like them as a whole.

Individuals on the other hand can make or break your day.

The people who express thanks and gratitude - they can do wonders for your mood if you're having a tough day.

It can also be quite satisfying to take an interaction that starts with hostility and turn it around so the person is actually happy with what you have achieved for them (even if it's not exactly what they initially wanted).

It's because customer service jobs are generally crap wages and/or zero hour contracts, so no job security. Often shit working conditions too, and people get harassed, abused etc.
If companies want GOOD customer service, they should bloody well pay their staff better.
The general public can be absolutely VILE. And generally, people are just stupid.
What is the point in getting mad at Sophie on checkouts because she's IDed you? She didn't make the rules, and the job doesn't allow for 'common sense' - if she does break them, she'll be fired.
So stop rolling your eyes, huffing, complaining loudly about the policy, stop muttering shit under your breath to your companion.
When I worked in one call centre, we had 6 weeks full time training, for a hair over minimum wage, and we got shouted at, sworn at, or had huffy pissed off people rant at us like it was OUR fault at least 3 times a day, every day.
Yeah, you do get shit people in customer service - you do. But 99% of the time when someone tells me about 'shit service' I think.... but there's clearly a rule/policy behind that, that they have to follow, so what's the point in getting annoyed in the moment, when that person CLEARLY doesn't make the rule.
A tip for everyone:
Don't ask staff to pass a complaint on about a rule etc, either contact complaints directly or email. The staff probably don't have time, but more importantly: Companies change because of customers, not what staff say.

definitely getting worse :(

I took a temp job at tesco whilst I wait for my new job to start. The way people speak to you I'd appalling they don't even speak in full sentences just bark words like chicken at you. Instead of asking where it is? Getting bardged into constantly and then add the heavy cages to pull out. Three shifts and I'm done, I couldn't barely walk after my shift. I'm not suprised staff are miserable when they have to deal with rude customers.